Cinder

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“What Does Cinderella Have to do with Cinder?”

After reading Cinder and considering Meyer’s use of elements of the Cinderella folktale within this text, students create presentations that convey the significance of these intertextual elements of the story.

Cinder includes several elements from the “Cinderella” story, a very old folktale that has been told in many ways in different cultures. In this activity, you will create a presentation that discusses why Meyer chose to use elements of the Cinderella story in Cinder. Your goal will be to both identify these elements and convey to your audience what is significant about their use.

Part A: Analyzing How Meyer Uses the Cinderella Story

• Read this version of the Cinderella story. This Grimm’s fairy tale (attributed to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm) is the basis of most Western Cinderella stories and is a reasonable representation of the story that Meyer likely had in mind when she wrote Cinder.
• Review the text of Cinder and gather examples of references to the Cinderella story in a notetaking document.
• Think about how and why Meyer included these references.
• Some might call Cinder an “adaptation” of the Cinderella story, while others might argue that Meyer has changed enough of the original story and its meaning to make Cinder more an example of “intertextuality” than adaptation. Still others might argue for the references to Cinderella merely being “allusions.” What do these terms mean, and why do they matter? Add your definitions of these terms and your thoughts on their connection to Cinder to your notes.
• You might consider this explanation of adaptation from Oxford Reference and this explanation of intertextuality and allusion from Literary Devices.
• Decide how Meyer’s story differs from the Cinderella story most commonly known to Western audiences. Does it change the story dramatically or subtly? Does it have a different overall meaning, or a similar one? Your answers to questions like these will guide you regarding which term you should use to describe the relationship between Cinder and Cinderella and will give you insight into what Meyer is trying to achieve with her story. Include your ideas and your choice of terms in your notes.

Part B: Creating Your Presentation

Create a presentation that uses both words and images to

• identify the elements of the Cinderella story within Cinder
• offer commentary on how the two stories differ
• offer analysis on how the references to Cinderella add meaning to Meyer’s story
• come to a conclusion about why Meyer used the Cinderella story within Cinder

Teaching Suggestion: The project can be tailored to the length of time available. Students might benefit from guidance with the definitions of terms in Part A; Part A, in fact, is flexibly designed for independent, partner, or small group learning.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with attentional and executive functioning issues may benefit from a defined number of assigned slides or visual aids per bulleted point in Part B. English language learners and those who struggle with written expression might convey most of their understanding through images. Students with limited abstract thought may struggle with the final two bulleted points in Part B; they might instead complete the project with a compare/contrast analysis of the first two bulleted points in Part B.